Saturday, December 31, 2016

In the Candy shop

Tell me.
Is it just me, or is the modern game-industry offering a bunch of "Meh"?
Once in a while, I buy something cheap on Steam. Sometimes, like "Dying
Light" a few weeks ago, it brings me a decent game. More often, I play a
game just a few times, then forget I ever bought it. But that's PC gaming. I'm
talking about consoles. PS, Xbox, Wii U, et cetera.

My
little girl is not too much of a gamer, yet she likes to sit with me playing
Mario, or asks if she can drive the Dump truck in GTA5 from A to B, gently. So,
last Christmas (I gave you my...) I was in the toys tore again. Clueless on
what Santa should buy them. I can’t think of anything they DO NOT have. Not
that they’re getting that much, but I already own laptops, phones, tablets,
consoles, games, Lego, multiple TV’s, creative drawing stuff. So that
automatically becomes available for the kids as well.

How
times changed. The two or three times we received presents in a year, were the
absolute holy grail of Joy in my youth. Lego, trains, clay, games - there was
always something to desire, and browsing through the toys magazine sixty times
a day prior to the December month, was sooo exciting it literally made me sick
and sleepless. Unlike myself, my parents didn’t have tons of stuff to play
with. Father didn’t play games, mother didn’t own a tablet with YouTube and an
endless amount of movies.

The Not-Knowing-what-to-Buy Nightmare

Now,
twenty-something years later, I have absolutely no clue what I would give
myself, nor my spoiled kids who seem to have everything already. I hate myself
for that. When young you would kill a person for a new Nintendo, or even just
the empty box of it. Now, when you have all the consoles, laptops
and money to buy new games, I couldn't care less. It must be that
dream/nightmare I always had; given 100 bucks to buy something nice, but the
dusty empty store had nothing nice to choose from. In sweating panic, you would
turn over the whole place, searching for something juicy. But nothing but shit
you don't want. Ten year old games, genres you don't like, stuff you already
have, obscure unknown stuff that doesn’t look cool at all. Feeling your slow
awakening, realizing you'll have to hurry up if you want to enjoy anything at
all, HAVING to buy something, ANYTHING, you would end up with something useless.
Like Dr.Mario for the Gameboy or something. And then wake up with a very bad,
empty, feeling.

Did you pick a nice game already?

Yes I
dreamed that several times. The horror. And when standing in a games store now,
I have exactly that unpleasant feeling. So I'm staring at the Wii U "arsenal".
Or well, arsenal... 20 games or so. 75% of them is made by Nintendo. Mario
World, Mario Kart, Mario Moron Dance, Mario Roller chair Cricket. Half of them
I already own, the other half is just too bad, or I've seen it and done it too
many times before. Smash Brothers for example. Excellent game, but after
playing the N64, GameCube and Wii versions, I don't expect anything new. Same
can be said about most other Nintendo games btw. You keep buying them because,
once upon a time, long ago, they gave you a fantastic youth. But deep in your
heart, you know Nostalgia is playing tricks on you. Nothing in that game will
be new or surprising, likely it will be too simple because you already solved
the same Metroid/Zelda/Paper Mario puzzles a billion times before. And no, you
can't turn into an eight-year old boy with an awesome Nineties kids E.T. bedroom
on the attic, getting cookies from your mom before going to school with
friends. Growing up doesn't work that way. Unfortunately.

Getting Bored in the Sandbox

Then the
other 25% in the Wii U games rack, asides from a few exceptions, is either
crap, weak versions of games I wouldn't buy on the PS4/Xbox either, or
"Retro"... Yes I liked the idea of "New Super Mario Bros", reviving
2D sidescrollers, ten years ago. It boosted life into Indy game-studios to
produce "8-Bit" alike games. Platformers, isometric view, pixelated
graphics. Reviving forgotten genres with simplicity and fun as core elements. Yet
I'm not sure how I feel about those. I bet there are little gems out there, but
when you can buy massive, beautiful, technological state-of-art games like Doom4
or "The last Guardian", then a simplistic 2D pixel-zombie shooter
game doesn't feel like a good buy (even when it's just 8 dollars). It's the
type of game I would randomly click on a "Flash Games" website on a
boring Sunday afternoon, play for two hours, and then... forget about.

And
yeah, I tried Terraria for instance. Liking the fact I can play it together
with my daughter. But then, after a few hours… what exactly are we supposed to
do?? I actually Googled that, ending up in forums where people explain it's a
"Sandbox game! Do whatever you want to do! Endless fun!". Erh...
yeah, but what's the fun of making an (ugly) flat 2D house, made of chunky
pixels? I'd rather play The Sims then. Or better, listen to my girls complaints
and fix my own house, my real house I mean. Or how about finding and slaying
giant Eyeball bosses? Ok... but what's the reward of doing all that? Pixelated
curtains for your 2D house.

Did you finally repaint the window frames, and fixed those ugly skirtings?! I sure did honey.

I'm very
old fashioned; a game needs a beginning and an end. I beat the game so I can
say I've beaten it. Endless games (and that includes Sim City, Theme Park, and
all those kind of games) will lose me sooner or later, as I feel the effort is
getting pointless. Certainly now that I'm a grown-up, as I can spend my time on
more useful things like, uh.. working. Or Tower22. Or being there for the
family. Or not being a lazy asshole that sits in the sofa the whole day and try
to sport at least an hour a week.

Consoles for Grown-ups: PS4 / Xbox One

Conclusion,
there is nothing to buy in the Wii U section. I'm hoping "Zelda: Breath of
the Wild" will give a worthy end to the not-so-shiny lifecycle of the Wii U
console. In the meanwhile, I spend a few dollars on "Advance Wars 2"
on its Virtual Console. Old, but a damn good game. Too bad I already know it.
And too bad, a NEW game like THAT is not on the fucking shelves.

"Hahaha,
you silly goose, what else did you expect?!" is what the PS/Xbox dudes
would laugh at me. So I'm taking two steps further to the PS4 shelves. Being
Nintendo, I never liked that "PlayStation", which you could pronounce
as "Pleestation" or "WCstation", in Dutch, meaning
"ToiletStation". Until my little brother and I just HAD to play GTA
San Andreas, bought a cheap PS2 (very late), and also found out classic
2-player brawling games like "Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks" or
"The Warriors" were out there. A domain Nintendo once owned with Double
Dragon and Final Fight, but gave away for mysterious reasons when the N64
arrived.

Therefore,
I also own a PS3. But I can count the games I *wanted* for that system on a
single hand. Basically the whole Rockstar collection (with “Red Dead Redemption”
as an unexpected treasure), plus The Last of Us. Oh, and Resident Evil 5 (also
bought 6 but let's scrap that passage) and Little Big Planet which had awesome
music, looked very fresh, but just wasn't that much fun to play in my opinion.
Tried several more demo’s or games from my brother, but it was all like “meh”.

"Meh"

Now that's a box you want to buy; our English school teacher about to kick the shit out of some punker thug.

Now
looking at the PS4 collection (and thus also the Xbox collection which is 95%
equal) I don't get sparkles either. Not getting a Love-on-First-sight when
looking at the cover art, as I would have with Mike Haggar or Simon Belmont. If
the shop owner would pick up a megaphone and shout to grab as much games as
possible within a minute, I would be staring, hands in pockets, for sixty
seconds, not knowing what to do. I considered a PS4, knowing at least a few
interesting games will be out there (Resident Evil 7 might be the push I
need...). So I looked and looked in the Top-10 lists more than once, to see if
there is anything for me. But... but... Most games either just don't appeal me,
or I can have their PC-versions as well.

Stuff
that requires a lot of "mousing", like RTS games or pure shooters,
just work better for me on a PC -though I regret getting Fallout4 for the PC,
instead of PS3 and enjoy in the couch. And then again, most action/shooters are
dull anyway. I never understood the popularity of Call of Duty. Hundred years
ago we had those "Rail-Shooters" in the arcade: camera flies a fixed
path, you shoot everything that moves along. That's all. CoD is the same,
except you have the freedom to run 10 meters, like a dog on a leash. Bark.

No Bot-friends to play with

Or
Battlefield then. It looks so criminally beautiful that every blood cell says “buy
buy buy”. But wait, says my wiser-me. You never liked the "Bad
Company" demo on the PS3. Battlefield-4 was broken, and sucked.
Battlefront (the Star Wars one) looks so yummy but also received bad critics
for its emptiness... Alarm bells should be ringing by now. The last BF seems to
fix a lot of that, but wait again, where in the Devil’s name are the Bots?! I
just don't like Multiplayer in general; gunning down each other running in
circles and getting yelled at by angry 14-year old pubic-hair-snots. Nothing to
do with tactics. But I totally digged Bots(CPU foes) in the very first
Battlefield or Unreal Tournament. Even if the A.I. wasn't brilliant, you could fill
hours with just trying all kinds of crazy stunts. And being able to actually
win without getting shot every five seconds, makes you feel like a big boy.

The funny
part is, I hear a lot of (14-year old?) guys yelling Bots are gay, defending
DICE's choice to leave them out. Main argument I’ve red is that DICE is
supposed to have more development-resources on making the Multiplayer even
greater by scrapping a "Bots Mode". I'm not sure if DICE themselves
had this as an excuse, but how about this: If they didn't spend millions of dollars,
hours and code-lines on a lousy Singleplayer campaign -which the original BF
never had in the first place!-,

they
could spend that on Bots. Which would mean even less work and thus even more
resources on your beloved Multiplayer. Less? How so? Well, no need to
design/model/produce/program single-player maps, no expensive voice-actors, no
need for all those extra one-time-use-only animations, music, models and
sound-effects. And the NPC A.I. that had to be programmed anyway, could be
perfected for their already existing Multiplayer maps. So why DICE is scrapping
bots? I don't know, but reason enough for me to scrap DICE as well then, no
matter how cinematic and realistic their stuff looks. Plus I don't like their
commercial. Classic song, but... Smashing Pumpkins in a World War 1 setting, really?!

Lonely LAN parties

I always
bought Nintendo consoles because they make, maybe kiddy, but unique games. Too
bad it's not so unique anymore after six or even more generations... I'm not
too much of a fan of the PS or Xbox either, because a lot of their franchises
are dumbed down milking cow games, and most of them have a superior PC brother
as well. Except that playing a game with a controller in the sofa, TOGETHER, is
more fun than sitting behind a PC or Laptop screen. Co-operative gameplay I
mean.

How I
loved to play a lot of (PC) games together with my brother back in the days.
Duke Nukem, Red Alert, Doom, Hidden & Dangerous, Age of Empires, Theme
Hospital. Anything would be ok. But it always got ruined. Either the games just
didn't have Co-op, or were so old they only supported weird serial or IPX
networks. Or we didn't have two PC's. Or the second PC was broken/too weak to
run the game. Or you needed to download a dozen patches and a stinky "Sven
Co-op" MOD that still only half worked. Or the game crashed (Hidden &
Dangerous, ahum). Or... after all the hassle, my little brother wasn't in the
mood anymore, being less of a gamer than I was anyway

Nowadays
Multiplayer functionality is SO much better. But yet, I can't enjoy it. Many games
still don't give you a true Co-operative mode, where you can beat the game with
a friend. Split screen is often too heavy for such advanced graphics, or the
game-style is just too fault-sensitive to have a second drunk running around,
ruining a perfectly scripted scene. Yes, scripting & 2 players = problems.
And joining (14 year old?) strangers on the internet, nah. Either they're too
serious, or just not co-operating at all. Besides I don't know them, they're
not in the same room, can't have a laugh with them.

Despite all it's bugs, I think Hidden & Dangerous (free download now), is one of the best Co-operative games out there. Too bad only a few persons on this planet share that thought.

Last but
not least, my little brother is not so little anymore. Lives in his own house,
with his girl. I have a daughter though (and boy, but he still shits Minecraft
in his diapers). But take Resident Evil 5. Pretty fun, type of game where you
can really help each other, supports Co-op, split-screen, we have two PS3
controllers, perfect! Except... that she is only eight years old, and gets
nightmares of zombies. And even if she weren't, she would suck at it, and I
would kill 99% of the zombies, or getting game-overs by her mistakes. Mario
Kart and World on the Wii U are more forgiving, but I'm just too old and
experienced compared to her. As if you would challenge Mike Tyson for a boxing
match. I solve all the puzzles, I always beat her, I always defeat the foes. And
I always lose my patience if she can't leap over those platforms for the fifth
time. Bad dad. Maybe in ten years the roles are different, but as a forty year
old by then, I don't think I'll enjoy playing an ancient game like Resident
Evil 5 then. Too little, too late.

For the kids

Now hold
on. I'm writing down this depressing story about a poor dad, not knowing what
to buy, and everything sucks nowadays. But wasn't I supposed to buy presents
for the *kids*? Thus not for myself, right? Oh yes. Almost forgot. So I quickly
left the games-section (disappointed), bought some girl-horse-shit and a
big-ass Star Wars Lego spaceship for my 2 year old son. At his age, he still
eats Lego bricks, but he doesn't like toys anyway. Grabbing stuff out of
drawers and whining on his mother’s leg is more his thing. Besides, he's a boy,
and boys will like Lego sooner or later. See this as an investment for his
future. And... father always wanted to have Lego and big Star Wars ships... The
best presents are the ones you both enjoy, right? Too bad that seems to be
impossible with games though…

In all
seriousness, I think kids who didn’t play Doom, Mario, Zelda or Command & Conquer
a trillion times before, can still have a blast. But as a grown-up, I feel the
magic is a bit over. So, as I was asking in the first line of this post, do you
feel the same about that, or am I just an old nagger?

Well,
let’s see what 2017 brings. Hopefully more than terrorist attacks, famous dead
artists, weird controversial presidents. Zelda: Breath of the Wild… Resident
Evil 7… Red Dead Redemption 2… God of War… Last of Us part 2… Tower22 playable
demo? (I’m not making promises)… Maybe 2017 won’t be that bad. Have a happy,
healthy, productive New Year dear readers.